Due to the fast penetration of wireless technologies, collaborative applications enabling the ad-hoc and dynamic sharing of files or services between devices (for instance, between attendees of a meeting) are becoming more and more attractive for end users. Such collaborative applications are usually based on the dynamic creation of a group of devices. The dynamic formation of a group has to rely on some form of authentication mechanisms in order to control and limit the set of devices able to join the group. Today, the bootstrapping of a collaborative group generally requires some existing trust relationships between devices and involves complex user interactions in order to exchange credentials (e.g., username and password, X.509 certificates, etc.) through out-of-band channels (voice, memory stick, e-mail, etc.). X.509 is a specification for digital certificates published by the International Telecommunications Union—Telecommunication (ITU-T). These solutions are usually cumbersome and too complicated for non technical users.
Generally, dynamic creation of groups with guarantees in terms of confidentiality of exchanged data is important for a large number of collaborative applications ranging from exchange of business information during a meeting (Groove®, sharepoint®) to exchange of pictures with friends (shared folders, MSN Spaces®, etc.). A universal, user-friendly, and secure way to create groups is required. Most existing protocols for the creation of groups assume some pre-existing form of trust relationships between the possible members of the group (either though some form of registration or through some form of credential distribution such as a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)). However these algorithms do not handle the case of ad-hoc group collaboration where members of a group do not have any existing trust relationships. Requiring these users to go through a phase of registration before being able to cooperate is both too complicated and too long in particular if the life time of the group is limited to the duration of a meeting. There is a substantial added value in the quick and secure creation of collaboration groups without requiring complicated user involvement.
In this regard, there is a need for processes and systems that address the shortcomings of the prior art.